


Equinox

by jiokra



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars: Before the Awakening - Greg Rucka
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brainwashing, Conditioning, Hurt/Comfort, Loyalty, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mission Fic, Mother-Son Relationship, Oblivious Poe, Poe Dameron Hurts So Prettily, Protectiveness, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Torture, Violence, Whump, Worldbuilding, diverges after The Force Awakens, started writing and outlined etc before tlj
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-10-29 00:27:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10842648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiokra/pseuds/jiokra
Summary: Poe's mission is simple: Infiltrate the First Order and implant the idea of defection into Kylo Ren’s mind. With Poe belonging to a select group that knows the location of Rey, the only Padawan in the galaxy, his mind is priceless and his body safe from execution.Poe succeeds in getting captured and sent as prisoner to the First Order… by Finn, who Poe hasn't seen since he awakened from his coma and left the Resistance for anonymity in the Outer Rim a year ago. Now Finn has been reconditioned and given a promotion to the leader of what remains of the FN unit.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [the cover for Poe Dameron #005](https://i.annihil.us/u/prod/marvel/i/mg/7/00/57a8cf594156c/portrait_incredible.jpg).
> 
> This fic diverges after The Force Awakens and doesn't follow anything plotwise from The Last Jedi.

Three days ago a distress signal had blared from Wezk 5’s ninth moon, alerting to activity in the region in relation to the First Order; an impossibility, as the moon housed nothing but inhospitable rocky terrain and labyrinthine caves leading to a chain of active volcanoes. Caves opened up to cathedrals of underground lakes and vicious rivers, others housed the boiling underground seas for which the moon was infamous. When the Resistance received notice of the distress signal, the beacon had whistled and blared, sound waves scattering against the walls of the pin drop silent command center. The discordant notes, the insidious nature of their existence, had pinpricks rise on the necks of everyone who heard it. General Organa had glowered at the holograms of the moon and the probable location of the alert, and beside her C-3PO had stood ramrod still, the pixilation glinting off his golden body.  

And Poe had grinned, a snake of a smile elicited by the unquenchable thirst for adventure. The deep rooted hunger to scour the galaxy and rid it of the First Order had risen up so high in his throat, he could have choked on it if he hadn’t reveled in it. After Finn had left the Resistance to chase down anonymity in the Outer Rim, the other pilots told Poe that he had become deranged with the loss, the need to reunite. But in the end, everyone was their own planet, dependent on an energy source for radiation, be it family, work, personal ambition. Planets inevitably orbited in isolation, their dependency a necessary evil for survival. In Finn’s absence, Poe had centered and returned to his true energy source: Ridding the galaxy of evil.

Wezk 5 was not derangement, but an opportunity.

Three days ago in that command center, eyesight pocked with magenta splotches from the holograms, Poe seized his chance.

“I’ll fly in, fly out. This could be it,” he said, thinking of a mission so secret, only General Organa, Poe, and BB-8 had clearance for it. A mission of hands which slithered through his skull, scrapping out a single word: Defect. “Our chance.”

His mission and the informant’s trigger led to a mission Organa and he were devising since Starkiller Base. He belonged to an intimate group of people who Kylo Ren detested and too fell into the good graces of Rey, the last Padawan in the galaxy. A single probe of his mind could deliver Rey to Snoke, the mission hinging on the fulcrum of Snoke’s greed. Live bait was never his preferred occupational distinction, nor was it the worst mission in his backlog.

Organa’s mouth pressed into a firm line. Expecting a sharp reprimand for speaking out of turn, Poe had been stunned to hear her only say, “We won’t be here when you come back.” The Resistance had outgrown the base on D’Qar since the success with Starkiller, recruits enlisting faster than they could secure supplies or room and board. Gaze locked on her, he nodded, and he waited. She glanced at the data. “Connix, send the coordinates to BB-8. Poe, after the investigation, you’ll report to Yavin 4 and match the coordinates to Black One. It’ll be stationed there.”

Excitement roiled in him.

“And Poe?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“While you’re home,” she said, eyes crinkling before a smile snatched up her mouth, “take a vacation.”

When Leia Organa smiled, crimes were committed were it not returned. Poe grinned lopsidedly, heart stammering because Leia Organa administrating him orders never got old.

Now three days later he fiddled with his gloves, checking the oxygen monitor over his chest, and readied to bid adieu to base.

BB-8 disappeared into the astromech port of their grey X-Wing with a single cyan strip which blended them into obscurity for the reconnaissance mission. Poe affectionately thought of the ship as Grey One. BB-8 tittered a chorus of discontented, bickering beeps in his wake about the specifications applied his port that were heard by no one, as Poe was the last to fly off of D’Qar from the hangar and the whirls devolved ages ago into white noise for him. 

D’Qar observed Poe’s pre-flight clearance in ignorance, emblematic of all planets discarded after rebels depleted their use for the cause.

Poe didn’t know how to fix it.

On Yavin 4 the first time he left, he raked fingers through the earth just outside the barn holding his mother’s A-Wing. Clutching dirt in a fist, he apologized to the inanimate objects that had become fixtures in his life since birth. Their state did not prohibit their importance in his life, and his skin went clammy at the thought of not properly saying goodbye. The mission for Wezk 5 came abruptly, paperwork piling and extra training sessions crammed in haphazardly to prep him for the moon’s wild terrain, and, as life often went, his formal goodbye to D’Qar was cast aside for higher responsibilities. He rattled his nails along the metal ladder hitched against Grey One, ignoring the hollow pit in his belly.

Before he set the toe of his boot on the ladder’s first rung, Organa cleared her throat, seeming to materialize out of thin air. Poe stiffened his shoulder instinctively to block a shudder, unnerved at his clouded mind rendering him unaware of her approach into the hangar. Her silent approach had the potential of being a product of the Force. His hair pricked.

Licking his lips, he swung around to her and rolled his boot along the rung. “General.”

“You know,” she said, “it’s never too late to pull back.”

“Can’t risk it.”

Emotion flickered in her eyes, words and worry ready to fire out of her, yet both knew this was futile.

“Good luck, Poe.”

He smiled.

“No matter what happens, make it back safe. You give the squadrons hope.”

He dug his boot further onto the rung, then looked across Organa and allowed himself to soak in the hangar for a final moment, memorizing the vines growing through the ceiling, the thick humidity from the tropical weather, the stench of the grease staining the floor and the exhaust pouring out of Grey One. Knocking thrice on the ladder, Poe nodded to Organa and hoisted himself into the cockpit.


	2. Chapter 2

“Grakkus!”

Ricocheted off the cave’s magnificent vault ceiling was the frantic, harried echo of “ _Grakkus! ...akkus! ...akkus!_ ”

Poe dangled over a roiling lake heated, presumably, by molten lava, and watched through his own Resistance issued night vision goggles— _Kriffin’ sadists have hearts after all—_ as the slithering tail of Grakkus the Hutt vanished around the chamber’s entrance.

Grakkus cackled, voice masked by chortles. “Good luck ... _luck_..., Mr. Dameron! ... _ameron!_ May we meet again ... _gain_... under better circumstances. ... _stances_...”

The cackling petered to silence broken only by the fizzling froth from below.

Poe stared, dumbstruck.

Grakkus the Hutt captured a shipping freighter en route to deposit cargo for a mining colony, enslaving the workers and setting up a competitive trading center on Wezk 5 for the trafficking of lifeforms. Ultimately, Wezk 5 was a bargaining plea to the First Order as substitutive payment for accumulated debts. Grakkus presented Poe with no further revelations, but he had a hunch buckets awaited those workers’ heads. One prisoner attempted an escape, accomplishing only to trigger the beacon sent to the Resistance. Grakkus, aware of the beacon, had awaited the Resistance’s arrival. Poe had yet to venture into the cave’s mouth before a man bludgeoned the back of his head, a cloth with a burning, saccharine sweetness smothering his nose and mouth

“Oh, Mr. Dameron,” Grakkus had said, as his cognizance grew hazy. “Hasn’t anyone ever warned you about biting off more than you can chew?”

Some time later—a duration of three hours, fifty-four minutes, and six-point-nine seconds, according to BB-8—Poe awakened bound and dangling over a chamber’s boiling lake. Grakkus, in his bulbous, slimy glory, was all too ready to pontificate the twists and turns that led up to Poe’s entrapment.

As the quiet of Grakkus’s absence stretched on, Poe gathered his senses and examined the facts of his current status.

He twined his fingers, ropes chafing his wrists at the motion, the only limb he could move with reasonable precision as his arms were bound by tight coils of rope from wrist to elbow, ankles chained together and secured to a pulley. Suspended over boiling waters, he dangled from the dead center of a metal bar that stretched from a parasteel landing dock by the cavern’s mouth to a wall of limestone columns. Water drops slipped off the dripstones barbing the vault, evaporating as they plummeted, lost in the humid ethers. Blood rushed to his cheeks as gravity assaulted him with his own weight, a migraine drilling holes in his skull. The hood of the Resistance’s standard issue thin, ash grey zipped sweater dangled over his scalp, splatters of water staining the cloth, yet it couldn’t prevent the rope from mincing his wrists.

Volleying his weight, his trek toward the landing dock lingered at a winding pace. At every thrust, the pulley crept onward before pivoting to the heart of the lake. Into the comm in his ear, Poe said, “Sorry for the delay, Beebee-Ate. Just a bit preoccupied. I ought to meet you at the rendezvous point momentarily.”

BB-8’s whimsical chirps acknowledged Poe’s unspoken command to prepare Grey One, and he added in weathered, elongated beeps whether he ought to consider a shooting blank.

Poe closed his eyes and wished BB-8 couldn’t understand Snap and Pava when they talked shop with him over rum. Shooting blanks, among Black Squadron, referred to a rogue droid assuming the helm sans pilot. “We discussed this,” he said, aggrieved. “Only when I’m covered up to my neck with my besties in the First Order.”

His fringe swept across the edge of the landing zone, chalk lightening the dark strands to a dull grey. Poe waited for the pulley to settle over the parasteel sheets and, gritting his teeth, fought against screaming muscles as he pulled his chest and torso up until his back was parallel to the floor. His fingertips grazed his boot, a blaster tucked between his shin and the boot’s leather. He pinched the butt, but before he secured a decent grip, the blaster slid out at lightspeed, zipping past his hand and narrowly missing his face as it crashed to the ground.

The clatter echoed throughout the dome, and Poe’s countenance slackened, the humor of the situation lost on him.

He bent into a smooth curve, spine screaming as he taxed the limits of its flexibility. He uttered a wretched noise, the pathetic groan of defeat, and upon cracking three knuckles in rapid succession, he relented. In the exertion, blood rushed to his face, cheeks pinched by the pressure. Heaving, he waited for his brain to grow less lightheaded, then rose to acquaint bound wrists with shackled ankles. He strained his eyes to examine the lock—a classic level tumbler. He smirked, the insight assuaging his bolstered exasperation. He’d break out the old fashioned way: Saw off the rope by scrapping it against a jagged edge of metal. Wrestle through his pockets for his pick set and its torsion wrench and hook pick.

The cave shook. Abruptly, deep. Volcanic.

He ground the rope, ignoring the raining fibers and smoky stench. Huskily, he said into the comm, “Beebee-Ate, run a report on the systemic activity at my present location and—”

Before he could finish, the lake’s tumultuous boil intensified, lathers of foam and froth crashing against the limestone walls at unprecedented levels. The oppressive humidity hit him in waves, mind fuzzing before adrenaline shocked him into hypersensitivity, as if he’d chugged a gallon of caf without breaks for air.

BB-8 hesitated with the report, yet soon the beeps tumbled out. No seismic activity had been detected, according to a thorough diagnostic, yet heatwaves radiated beneath the lakebed, the sedimentation disturbed with an underground fortress. In approximately five-point-two minutes, a bomb would detonate, causing the lakebed to plunge into never ending depths and the walls to combust. Water levels would rise as rock flooded the hole, temperatures increasing, and, in conjunction with the vociferous roil, the lake would engulf the limestone walls, the landing dock, the ceiling, spreading out to—

“I get it,” cut in Poe.

BB-8 continued to report his findings, although at a lower, calmer cadence.

“I’m guess I’ll have to order you not to give me the odds for escaping this joint.”

A coil of rope snapped, slack working its way through the rest. Poe jerked his elbows and wrists, loosening the binds further, and it slipped off him, clattering to the floor.

He got to work picking the lock, yet his joints were cramped and sweaty, shaking too much to keep a solid grip on the tiny instruments. Blood coursed through his veins again, the cold numb of blood loss shuddering against his humid, warm skin. Each second ticked past like sand between splayed fingers. He eased in the hook and navigated the dips and dives of the lock, torsion wrench sliding in as security, but the jitters in his antsy veins had the wrench jumping out, the efforts futile as it all came undone. On and on this went while BB-8 beeped gently into the comm the remaining time until the cave’s desecration. Poe gnawed on his bottom lip, tasting iron, yet it failed to even his temper.

Boots echoed outside the cave’s mouth. Grakkus, or one of his cronies, had finally decided the fate of their collateral damage. Death by explosion did not suffice in their twisted, koyo fruit sized brains.

Poe glowered at the lock. “Slow down, you... _banthas_.”

The humidity and suspension had taken its toil, for his ears hallucinated that the boots’ rhythm slowed in tempo.

He strained his eyes and focused on the slightest movements of the pick set tools and the lock. Yet the boots drew nearer, gaining in speed, and Poe debated if he ought to ditch the lock and instead volley himself back over the heart of the lake, taking Grakkus down with him when his feat of engineering ran its program. The boots muffled out lake’s virulent simmer and matched the pace of the thunderous pulse hammering in his ears. Poe concentrated on the boots’ steady beat, finding his precision improved because of it.

Then it arrived to a sudden halt, catching him unaware, and he dropped the torsion wrench.

“Damn it,” he hissed, and, at the same time, was met with a hesitant, softly spoken, “Poe Dameron?”

Poe froze, not having heard that voice in over a year.

Disbelieving, he craned his head back, expecting to see Grakkus’s cronies with a recorded device parroting that voice.

Instead, he saw Finn. Blaster in hand, angled at the lake.

Save for the thick, rectangular jetblack frames with clear glass, some high tech goggles Poe hadn’t seen before, Finn looked exactly the same: Brown eyes creased at the corner by a furrowed brow, clenched jaw smooth and void of any stubble, posture impeccable yet shoulders tepid, blatant in his look that he did not possess the inkling nor the will to terrorize down to the core of his being. And, to Poe’s bewildering delight, he wore that old flight jacket. After all this time, it still suited him.

He looked the same. Exactly the same. A time capsule of the greatest man in the universe Poe had ever met.

“Poe.” Finn stepped closer, blaster slipping. His hand flinched and caught it on reflex. “Poe. Poe, it’s really—it’s you.”

Just hearing Finn’s voice, seeing him, Poe felt as if the past year were inconsequential.

“Yeah.” Poe licked his lips, mouth dry. “Yeah, buddy. It’s me. The one and only.”

Finn shuddered, and his blaster clattered to the floor, forgotten as he rushed to Poe, every step weighed down by the time and agony that had separated them. At least, Poe believed he felt so.

The coils around his heart began to snap as Finn’s approach closed the distance. Finn was his beacon, shining the way back to D’Qar like the brightest sun, keeping him grounded in the present when he feared that a galaxy without evil were nothing but an unattainable dream.

Pinpricks stabbed him. _Let’s not forget why you’re so glad to see him, Dameron._

Finn stopped close enough for Poe’s hair to brush against his chest, clothed by that old jacket. Poe’s hold on his core gave way, the crown of his head pressing into Finn’s warmth.

“I can’t reach the pulley,” said Finn. “I’ll get the tool you dropped, but you’ll have to pick it yourself.”

After a second in Finn’s presence, Poe could steady his hands. “That’s fine. You know a way out of here?” Lingering at the tip of his tongue was the inquiry of why Finn was on Wezk 5’s ninth moon at all.

Finn nodded. “Yeah. I ran into Grakkus and the rest outside the cave, but I couldn’t— They told me how to find you. That—that you were—” He glared at the lock.

His throat pinched. Finn ventured into the earth for him. After all this time, the embers between them remained ignited. But he’d done so for Rey and on the Finalizer when he needed a ride off that joint, Poe reminded himself. Finn was a good person. It meant nothing.

“No worries, pal. We’ll find them. Two heads are better than one, right?”

“You mean that?”

“Hand me that tool,” said Poe, smiling crookedly, “and we’ll find out.”

Finn stiffened, peering down at Poe curiously, yet simply snatched the tool and passed it to him, silent as Poe started picking the lock. Finn embraced him from behind, holding tight in preamble of the lock coming undone and Poe’s full weight bearing down on him. With his hands steady and less clammy now, the tools slid into place without resistance, lock undone, and no warnings blared before Poe slammed hard into Finn. His boots crashed onto the parasteel landing dock, ankles screaming in agony, yet Finn shouldered the full burden of his weight and prevented a fall.

Then the thoughts intruded. Just as they had a year ago. Without preamble, without logic or reason. Nothing Poe could do to stop it. His heels wavered on the edge of a proverbial abyss, arms thrashing as he fought to regain balance.

Years passed since Poe had last been with a man, always non-military on Yavin IV, then arrived these intrusive thoughts of Finn holding him, or Poe clasping his hand, not as he lied comatose but conscious. Without reason, logic, or preamble, it left Poe stunned, enthralled, struck silent at the possibility, the mystery, the notion. But then he contemplated the logistics—

—and was thrust back into reality.

Tides licked at the edge of the landing pad.

Poe slipped out of Finn’s arms. “You mentioned knowing a way out of here?”

Finn observed the rising tides with a furrowed brow. Poe’s lip quirked. _Always the worrywart._ A need niggled away at Poe to ruffle his hair, or cajole him into forgetting the matter with a joke that made a bantha out of himself.

Finn ran a finger along his brow, smoothing it, and tipped his chin to the tides. “Do you know what’s going on with that?”

Poe took a breath, contemplating the wisest way to disclose the carnage awaiting them, but then Finn gripped his shoulder, a parting gift before he turned for the chamber’s mouth.

“Follow me,” said Finn.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, kudos, subscriptions, bookmarks—everything is a treasure! ♥ I'm deep into writing this and guesstimate the end at sight to be around 50k, with a little over 30k already written. Thank you and I hope you enjoy! :) ♥


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